Abc Tempts Fate With Rookie-laden Fall Lineup

ABC is doubling down on tempting fate with the fall schedule it announced Tuesday.

Comedy is supposed to be dead. ABC is scheduling four new sitcoms in a two-hour block on Wednesday.

What?s more, ABC is bringing back Scrubs, which was thought to be playing out its final season, and spring tryout Better Off Ted, which was yanked off the schedule prematurely because of low ratings. In a real puzzler?it could be economics?more proven sitcom Samantha Who?, which was paired with Ted, was canceled.

Nights with all new series never work is a TV maxim. The freshmen comedies will be followed on Wednesday by a new drama.

ABC tried such a strategy two seasons ago on Wednesday and, because of the writers? strike, continued it this season. The only survivor is Private Practice, which didn?t hit its stride until it was relocated after Grey?s Anatomy, the hit that spawned it.

Pushing its luck in another way, ABC is scheduling eight new series for fall. The conventional wisdom is this number of newcomers can never be properly promoted. A few at a time, such as the three additional rookies penciled in for midseason, is considered more prudent.

The comedies will have high power star voltage going for them.

Kelsey Grammer bounces back in Hank as a former high ranking executive forced to start over when he is let go by his company.

Patricia Heaton, who co-starred with Grammer in the short-lived Fox workplace series Back To You, is again in a situation in which she excelled in Everybody Loves Raymond; a wife and mother of three in the domestic comedy The Middle.

Ed O?Neill, who played the iconic Al Bundy in Married...With Children, is again the head of a household in Modern Family, which borrows the stylistic gimmick of The Office, framing the clan as the subject of a documentary.

Courteney Cox is single again and hitting the dating scene, this time at a tougher age, in Cougar Town.

Their companion drama on Wednesday, Eastwick, a knockoff of the flick The Witches of Eastwick, also boasts some familiar faces, Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price and Sara Rue.

ABC has two other new dramas in the 2009-10 starting lineup. Flash Forward has supernatural elements as people are allowed to get a glimpse of what their futures hold and are forced to react to that.

The Forgotten from prolific hitmaker (CSI, et al) Jerry Bruckheimer focuses on amateur detectives, who tackle cases the police have given up on because they can?t identify the victims.

The other rookie for fall is a reality series, Shark Tank, which allows would-be entrepreneurs to plead their cases and seek support from a team of successful businessmen.

The midseason arrivals are all dramas. The Deep End follows young lawyers trying to survive at cut-throat firms.

Happy Town is set in a small hamlet where an inordinate number of unsolved kidnappings have the town folk skittish.

There?s also a remake of the alien lizards vs. humans sci fi saga V.

The major scheduling ploy will have the slumping Ugly Betty exiled to low viewership Friday, where it all but certainly will gradually expire.

Here is the ABC starting lineup for fall (the midseason shows have not been assigned time periods).